For months, anger has been building in the Democratic Party over President Biden’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza. Protesters chanted through his campaign events, marched outside the White House and vilified him as “Genocide Joe” on social media.
Now, Michigan’s primary next week will put that resentment on the ballot for the first time, with Mr. Biden’s liberal critics urging Democrats to vote “unattached” against him. Some of the president’s allies worry that a movement to register disapproval against him now could have lasting effects in the general election — especially if Mr. Biden does not change his stance on the conflict.
The combination of early primaries in Michigan, a large and politically active Arab-American population, progressive students on college campuses and the choice of a protest vote have raised the stakes in what has otherwise been a sleepy election in the state.
There are warning signs for Mr. Biden that frustration over Gaza is spreading beyond Dearborn and other Detroit suburbs, the heart of Michigan’s Arab diaspora, and onto the state’s college campuses, where students increasingly feel more affinity with the Palestinian cause.
In some Michigan communities without a large Arab American presence, crowds demanded that their local governments enact cease-fire resolutions. Last week, The Detroit Metro Times, an alternative weekly, endorsed voting “unattached” in the primary.
There is no public poll showing how much support Mr. Biden’s “no-strings-attached” push could bleed, but Democrats at the highest levels of Michigan politics have warned — most of them privately — that the president is at risk of losing the state. former President Donald J. Trump, if those who disagree with his policy on Israel stay home or vote for a third-party candidate.
“Every vote that doesn’t support Joe Biden makes it more likely that we will have a Trump presidency,” said Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, co-chairman of Mr. Biden’s campaign. “Any vote that is not cast, or cast for a third party, or cast to send a message, makes it more likely that there will be a Trump presidency.”
The campaign to vote “non-aligned” was announced this month by Layla Elabed, a sister of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American progressive who last weekend became the first member of Michigan’s congressional delegation. to ask that Mr. Biden be voted out in primary school.
Ms. Tlaib’s endorsement has worried Biden supporters in the state’s congressional delegation, who worry it will be difficult to convince voters energized by the “non-aligned” push in the primaries to back Mr. Biden in November.
But in Michigan, few Democratic officials are willing to risk a backlash if they criticize the effort to vote “unattached.”
“The Muslim community and the Arab-American communities are clearly very upset, and understandably so,” said Rep. Sri Tanendar, D-Detroit. “You know, about 30,000 innocent civilians have been killed, including women and children. So the concern is understandable. They use this time to get attention, make a point and make a case. And I really don’t blame them.”
Mr. Thanedar said he would vote for Mr. Biden, however, because “I’m not a one-issue voter.”
Michigan Democrats expressed uncertainty about how many people will vote “unaffiliated” in Tuesday’s primary. As the Biden campaign prepares Arab-American and young progressive voters to oppose the president in the primaries, campaign spokeswoman Lauren Heath emphasized that union workers, suburban women and black voters remained supportive.
“His investments in infrastructure and green energy have created thousands of union jobs. He walked the picket line with the UAW Defending Reproductive Rights, an issue that motivated hundreds of thousands of Michiganders to flip the state in the midterms,” Ms. Heath said of Mr. Biden. “He recently met with black voters in Detroit to talk about his administration’s efforts to create historically low black unemployment. And he is working tirelessly to create a just, lasting peace in the Middle East.”
Two weeks ago, Mr. Biden’s White House sent a delegation of senior aides to Dearborn to try to ease tensions with Michigan’s Arab-American community. John Feiner, deputy national security adviser, told local leaders that the Biden administration had made “mistakes” in dealing with Israel and Gaza and had left “a very damaging impression.”
That same day, Mr. Biden said Israel had gone over the top in its response to the October 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people.
But students, Arab Americans and other Michiganders said in interviews that Mr. Biden’s alliance with the Israeli government was unforgivable and would prevent them from voting for him in November if he did not call for a cease-fire and halt American aid to his war effort. Israel. Perhaps more troubling for the president as he tries to win over skeptical young voters, students without family ties to the Middle East described their advocacy of the Palestinian cause as part of their social identity.
Ruthy Lynch, 21, an undergraduate student from Traverse City, Mich., said she didn’t know much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the Gaza war.
Ms. Lynch now wears a black-and-white scarf known as a kaffiyeh on campus to show friends and others that she sides with the Palestinians.
“I wear it as a sign of solidarity,” Ms. Lynch said. “It’s nice to walk around campus. I see other people wearing coffee, and we’re trying to kind of normalize it and bring more visibility to the solidarity with the Palestinians.”
Ms. Lynch said she had voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but would not have voted for Mr. Biden in November unless he called for a ceasefire and cut off U.S. military aid to Israel. “I’m not sure I can bring myself to do it,” she said.
A Fox News poll of registered voters released last week showed Mr. Biden narrowly trailing Mr. Trump by two percentage points in a Michigan showdown. With third-party and independent candidates participating, Mr. Trump’s lead grew to five points.
Abbas Alawieh, a former congressional aide from Dearborn who helped organize the group Listen to Michigan, which is leading the “non-aligned” effort, said it was Mr. Biden, not those protesting his foreign policy, who his electoral prospects in jeopardy.
“President Biden risked himself in a general election by making his Gaza policy indistinguishable from Netanyahu’s more murderous instincts and actions,” Mr. Alawieh said after the Ann Arbor rally, referring to the Israeli prime minister. “He’s already lost people, and what we’re trying to tell him is, if you take a different approach, that’s something that people here in Michigan need to see. Help us prevent Trump from becoming president.”
Mr. Biden’s political toxicity in Ann Arbor and Dearborn was evident in his campaign planning this week. Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to visit Grand Rapids on Thursday, and the campaign has sent surrogates including Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans, and Reps. Sara Jacobs of California and Joyce Beatty of Ohio to address voters. — but no events are scheduled in the congressional district that includes Ann Arbor.
Instead, Rep. Ro Khanna of California is hosting an event on Thursday that posters across the University of Michigan campus are calling a “ceasefire town hall” and is scheduled to appear with Ms. Tlaib in Dearborn on Thursday night. Mr. Khanna’s role as a Biden surrogate is not mentioned — an apparent failure to avoid advertising his relationship with the president’s campaign.
“If we don’t have a change in the situation in Gaza and in our political approach, we risk losing,” Mr Khanna said. “Every day that bombs fall on innocent children and women in Palestine is not a good day for our party and our prospects.”
Listen to Michigan has set a public goal of 10,000 votes — slightly less than the margin by which Mr. Trump carried the state in 2016, but about half the number of unaffiliated votes in Michigan’s 2016 primary and in 2020. Our Revolution, the political group formed by supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, said it was aiming for 10 percent of the primary vote. (Mr. Sanders rejected the effort, a spokeswoman said.)
While “unaligned” supporters have held events in Dearborn and on Michigan campuses, they have not developed a presence in Detroit’s black neighborhoods. Branden Snyder, the executive director of Detroit Action, a progressive organizing group in the city, said voters there would be more inclined to support a Biden protest effort if the focus was on domestic issues.
“There are a ton of black and brown people who are unhappy with Biden’s politics and look to Biden to spend resources abroad instead of domestically on issues we care about,” he said. “If the messages were really focused on these people, you would have serious concerns.”
Some Michigan voters say Mr. Biden has already lost their support in the general election.
Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, an Iranian-American environmental toxicologist from Ann Arbor who has repeatedly run for local office, was handing out business cards Tuesday highlighting her latest City Council campaign. Her platform includes cleaning up the city’s polluted water, enacting a $15 municipal minimum wage — and telling Congress to “stop funding Israel’s wars.”
Dr. Savabieasfahani, 64, said she would not support Mr. Biden even if doing so would help Mr. Trump return to the White House.
“We cannot be held hostage between two terrible choices,” he said. “Choose between these two old white men who don’t know what you want and don’t agree with what you want.”